Bold, Band of Brothers Best Barcelona

Sunday, March 02, 2014

ne week after Pro Tour Born of the Gods in nearby Valencia, thousands of players had traveled to Barcelona for a weekend of Born of the Gods/Theros Team Limited, including several of Magic's biggest names: For example (18) Martin Jůza, Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa, and (9) Shuhei Nakamura teamed up to reach place 13, Raphaël Lévy, Melissa DeTora, and (1) Jérémy Dezani finished the tournament in seventh place, and (4) Reid Duke, (3) Owen Turtenwald, and William Jensen made it all the way to the semifinals. They were the big favorites going into the playoffs, but their run was cut short by Swiss team Olivier Duport, Wilson Lam, and Louis Ballivet.

Meanwhile, in the other semifinal, brothers Daniel and Tobias Gräfensteiner, playing with Christian Seibold, had bested brothers Manuel and Christan Hauck, playing with Stephan Schwarz. After one more draft, the Gräfensteiners and Seibold were again victorious, sweeping the final 2-0, in fact repeating their semifinal result. In both rounds, there was no need to even finish the third match.

For Seibold, this was the second big success within just a few days. At the Pro Tour, he had made it all the way to the quarterfinals, now it was finally his time to hoist the trophy. Congratulations to Daniel Gräfensteiner, Christian Seibold, and Tobias Gräfensteiner, champions of Grand Prix Barcelona 2014!

Combining the No. 3 and the No. 4-ranked player in the world with a recent Hall of Fame inductee, made Owen Turtenwald, Reid Duke, and William Jensen the clear favorites in this match, as it did in basically all their matches throughout the weekend. And, to no one's big surprise, they had won almost all their matches this weekend too.

Their opponents from Switzerland, Wilson Lam, Louis Ballivet, and Olivier Duport, meanwhile still needed to make a name for themselves. A good start was making the Top 4 here, now it was time to do one better and win this fight David versus Goliath.

However, the way of Team Booster Draft is a tricky one, full of traps and pitfalls. While all weekend long Team Sealed gave players the opportunity to pool their resources, resulting in decks that were much better than regular draft decks, Team Booster Draft has players of opposing teams sit next to each other and the resulting draft process is characterized less by cooperation than at a regular draft table. The resulting decks, consequently, tend to be worse.

Owen Turtenwald had drafted an aggressive red-green deck and was facing Wilson Lam and his blue-red.

539 teams showed up to make Grand Prix Barcelona one of the larger Team Sealed events in recent history and now, after 14 rounds of Swiss as well as the semi finals, only two teams are still standing: The Swiss team of Olivier Duport, Wilson Lam and Louis Ballivet who was able to overcome the heavily favored American team of Owen Turtenwald, William Jensen and Reid Duke in the semi finals and the Gräfensteiner brothers Tobias and Daniel that teamed up with their friend Christian Seibold who had just sent home their fellow Germans, the Hauck brothers who played together with their friend Stephan Schwarz.

Could the Swiss team beat the odds once again and also take away the trophy or could team Seibold / Gräfensteiner, who spent all of last week celebrating Seibold's Top 8 at the Pro Tour Valencia, keep their momentum and win the finals?!

We would now be looking at the following matches:

Wilson Lam (B/U) vs. Christian Seibold (W/R)

Olivier Duport (B/R) vs. Tobias Gräfensteiner (W/R)

Louis Ballivet (G/U) vs. Daniel Gräfensteiner (G/B)

Team Seibold / Gräfensteiner was pretty satisfied with the way the draft went overall while the Swiss team wasn't feeling that confident. Ballivet's draft certainly didn't play out as expected as he isn't able to play his first pick and Lam's deck is supposedly bad. Then again, few would have thought that Lam, Duport and Ballivet would be able to knock out Turtenwald, Jensen and Duke, so let's see how this goes!

Duport took his chances attacking, but a Gods Willing saved Gräfensteiner's Ill-Tempered Cyclops, which started to turn the tide in the match. When Gräfensteiner also found a Nyxborn Rollicker to enchant the Fanatic of Mogis, Duport was the one looking for answers.

Unfortunately, he never found them and just a few turns later, he went for his sideboard.

Tobias Gräfensteiner 1 - 0 Olivier Duport

The match between Ballivet and D. Gräfensteiner seemed most evenly matched.

The last match between Louis Ballivet and Daniel Gräfensteiner seemed to be the one most evenly matched for quite a while. That all changed when Gräfensteiner found a Nyxborn Triton to enchant his Servant of Tymaret and when he attacked, Ballivet had no option but to double block it.

A Boon of Erebos after that wrapped things up, which meant the German team was now leading in all three games!

Daniel Gräfensteiner 1 - 0 Louis Ballivet

It didn't look good for the Swiss players and they showed some signs of exhaustion!

The teams took their time shuffling, with the Germans trying to remain calm despite the favorable odds and the Swiss trying desperately to focus.

Duport purposely started the second game in a very aggressive manner, trying to rattle his team. He still believed there was a chance they could turn this around. Thanks to Deathbellow Raider and Akroan Crusader, he dealt a few points of damage early on and Daniel Gräfensteiner was happy when he was offered the chance to trade a creature with Satyr Rambler.

The second copy of Wild Celebrants stuck and put D. Gräfensteiner far ahead!

This was only the start of Daniel Gräfensteiner's comeback, though. While his first copy of Wild Celebrants fell victim to a timely Fall of the Hammer, a second copy stuck and after a Nyxborn Shieldmate enchanted it, Gräfensteiner had found a gigantic threat that Ballivet simply couldn't handle.

Fanatic of Mogis applied even more pressure and when Duport fully realized the desperate situation he was in with just 2 life remaining, he shuffled up and extended the hand.

T. Gräfensteiner 2 - 0 Olivier Duport

The German team now needed to win only one more game to become champions!

The second game between Christian Seibold and Wilson Lam seemed a lot more evenly matched. A Griptide slowed Seibold down, allowing Lam to deal 4 damage with the ensuing attacks. Seibold kept his calm and he recruited Kragma Butcher for the second time before he followed it up with Leonin Snarecaster while Akroan Skyguard struck back, making it 18 on Lam.

Seibold's patient aproach payed huge dividents!

That meant the non-fliers ended up in a Mexican standoff and Seibold was the only player controlling a flying creature. At first, Akroan Skyguard didn't seem too threatening for Lam, but 2 copies of Dragon Mantle certainly changed that for the worse! After the German had sent his creature in and the dust had settled, Lam was left with 14 life.

Meanwhile, Ballivet had shown some signs of life, tying the scores with Tobias Gräfensteiner on the third table!

Ballivet 1 - 1 T. Gräfensteiner

That didn't change the situation at hand on the first table, however. Lam went over his options frantically, but he just couldn't find an out to deal with the flying threat and just a few turns later, it attacked for lethal.

This in turn meant game, set and match for team Gräfensteiner / Seibold, who immediately started to celebrate!

Congratulations to Christian Seibold and Tobias and Daniel Gräfensteiner, Champions of the Grand Prix Barcelona!

Top 5 Cards

Virtually every team in the tournament was able to build a strong white heroic deck in the Team Sealed portion, often the crown jewel of their line-up. This was based more on the abundance of good options for the strategy overall than any specific cards of course, but since this is a team event what better card could we use as a stand-in than the leader of the phalanx who boosts the morale of his whole team and even turns lowly 1/1 tokens (provided by God-Favored General or Vanguard of Brimaz, for example) into a formidable fighting force.

Again and again throughout the weekend, Shipwreck Singer was the crucial ingredient in a number of blue-black decks which allowed them to take control. More so, it was one of the best reasons for teams to combine the two colors in the first place! Strong in the early game and stronger in the late game, the unassuming 1/2 was particularly useful in the face of a new breed of white and/or red weenie rush decks. The Team Sealed format allowed those to be streamlined to perfection, lowering the mana curve so much as to be able to manage with as little as 15 lands, on the flip side making them even more susceptible to the calling of the Shipwreck Singer.

In multiple feature matches throughout the weekend, Archetype of Courage was one of the absolute standout cards. Whether with or against deathtouch, whether on offense or defense, whether with lots of smaller creatures or one big aura and counter-laden monster, first strike proved invaluable time and time again. One first strike creature is good, having all of one's creatures strike first (and none of the opponent's) is downright unfair.

The trusty Nessian Asp once again proved itself to be one of the cornerstones of the Limited environment. The formidable roadblock was central to many a game's turnaround when the usually slower green deck stabilized the board to later win with its generally larger creatures. Nessian Asp even helps in the final stages of such a game, providing a quick clock thanks to its monstrous ability.

Among the many bestow creatures in the format, Eidolon of Countless Battles was certainly one of the best and biggest. Owen Turtenwald's team managed their 9-0 run on Day One in no small part thanks to the two copies in his deck; it showed up in the feature match area on the second day too; and when it showed up it usually won games. In a tournament of countless battles, you definitely wanted to have this Eidolon at your side.